jimfitter wrote:Remember, this is something you can release with imperfections...

Blasphemer!

I don't 'do' 100+ page Support threads.

Btw I've noticed that once you go past the 5 buttons above that the toolbar buttons peter out a bit and look a bit '2004' ish. I couldn't do much about that before, as once a theme is as popular as this was then people scream blue murder if you ever change anything!

This will be a good time to sort those buttons and to do the Download/New Window/Print/Bookmark/History and a new Sidebar one for SM...all in the 'globe' style. The New Tab one is OK as are Cut/Copy/Paste, but the rest need changing.

Will not take very long.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

Frank Lion wrote:This will be a good time to sort those buttons and to do the Download/New Window/Print/Bookmark/History and a new Sidebar one for SM...all in the 'globe' style. The New Tab one is OK as are Cut/Copy/Paste, but the rest need changing.

Will not take very long.

New globe buttons now done and coded up. Once I'm sure I like the new colours I picked for each, then I'll drop the 'glyph' on top (the printer symbol, etc).

I'm doing this stuff while taking breaks from working in the garden or painting (that's art type painting, not painting a fence or something ) and it's coming along quicker than I thought.

#3. Scrollbars and progressmeter ball - horrible. I reckon the semi-transparent scrolls on ML300 works well and intend to do a similar effect here. It'll give a 'softer' look, which is what I'm aiming for for the whole theme.

#4. Probably a lot more, but the toolbar backgrounds, toolbar buttons, tabs will stay just as they were.

I don't know the future of SM any more than you do, but I do know that AK2 is going to look damn good when it's done.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

New additional 'globe' buttons for SM browser and a complete new set for the SM Email and T/Bird side. I used a CSS3 code route for the small icons set and that saved a lot of time in not having to make little buttons. Toolbar backgrounds, tabs just as they were, other stuff brought up to date.

'Done' is a relative term. It's done throughout (the Addons Manager styling is the best I've done), but now it goes off for betatesting and bug hunting. Always best not to rush that side, so that'll take a month. You don't actually work on it that much at all, it's more a case of using it, trying out combinations of setup and fixing little things that aren't quite right.

Back in the day, I had 3 betatesters working on my stuff (now you know why my Support threads were so short) and the best was GB. Damn, that guy was good, never missed a thing. After a few years, he did start to miss the odd thing and that pained him. So, I 'pensioned him off', but we're still in touch a few times a year. That'll be 11 years now, my, how time flies.

A good betatester is worth their weight in gold and makes a theme writer look good. Thanks, GB.

..sometime, I'll post some screenshots.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

Well, I started this one of the first day of this month, so the last day of it seems like a good and appropriate day to have a picture show of the result -

Just click the thumbs for the fullsize images -

AK2 on the SeaMonkey Browser window (with the Sea Fox extension) -

AK2 on the SeaMonkey Browser window (with the Sea Fox extension) using the magic of the DOM Inspector to show all the hover states of the buttons.

AK2 on the default SeaMonkey Browser window -

AK2 on the default SeaMonkey E Mail window -

AK2 on the default SeaMonkey E Mail window and using the magic of the DOM Inspector to show all the hover states of the buttons

AK2 on the default Thunderbird E Mail window

~ the 'Small Icons' buttons for this lot all look the same as above, but, as you'd expect...smaller.

I might well write a lot more on this stuff on the new design, new graphics and coding of this new AK2 for SeaMonkey and Thunderbird, then again, I might not. 'Rewarding, but tough' would be a good summary.

Either way, in the meantime feel free to ask any questions you like about, er, anything relating to all this.

This one isn't due out for public release for ages yet ( i.e. until Firefox 57 comes out in November?) but, if I already know you, then again feel free to contact me and I'll send you a copy.

Frank

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

But it was just mere frippery dashed off in moments whilst I was listening to the Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber performed, unusually, by the Texan Duelling Banjo Band, featuring a rare appearance of Mr Charles 'Charlie' Charles on spoons and trumpet.

That aside, your username looks somewhat familiar to me, so do indeed contact me, if you ever require a 'pre-release' version of AK2.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

The Addons Manager, both the default on and the Sea Fox one, have had a makeover already -

Hard to show all the changes in one shot, but I've moved the position of the background image on the right side and totally changed how the disabled extensions/themes listings look. It now looks better.

Somewhat amazingly, I haven't found any bugs that needed fixing for a few days now and 'the look' is pretty well done, but not overdone. We'll see, but I reckon we're pretty much done on this one.

One thing is certain, it took less time than I originally thought it would.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

That's the recent Thunderbird theme figures for ML Sea Monkey and, as most people know, Thunderbird are carrying on with 'legacy' extensions, Complete Themes and the Gecko engine, i.e. not like Firefox.

So, there's the theme going along and maxing at 6,500 active daily users during the week and plunging down at the weekend. If you design a theme, as this one is, for use in the workplace then that is expected. No idea if the 6,500 is accurate, could be x10 that for all I know, but there are less Thunderbird users than Firefox and even as it is that theme is at #11 out of 105 T/Bird themes. OK?

Now look at what happens in the third week of June - figures drop by over two thirds and then just carry on going up and down during the week as though nothing was wrong. Isn't this precisely what I've been saying for years and what has been happening for years? This isn't the T/Bird people doing this, this is the AMO site and it was bad enough when they were doing it with Firefox stuff.

No, **** that. AK2 is a damn fine looking theme and deserves better than that. That is the very last time that AMO is going to mess about with my theme figures ever again. ML Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey are already on AMO and that's fine, but AK2 will not be going there.

On the plus side, I may well put it on my own site. The only reason I haven't put the other new themes there is that, er, I really hate writing those webpages and they are really dull to do and take ages.

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)

Few weeks back, I did updates for the ML Sea Monkey theme and its silver chum and then turned my attention to AK2. Good stuff, AK2 hasn't been updated for well over 6 months and the other 2 for over 10 and all were still going strong - this is how theming should be.

Lots of little fixes done on the new AK2 (called version 2.0.5.7) and also some larger ones, done in anticipation of the release of Thunderbird 58 which I already know will break various extensions, etc.

Visually, the AK2 look is pretty much set, but I have introduced an image into the folder pane on the left in Thunderbird and the SeaMonkey Email client. I've also made the background in both the folder and message pane slightly lighter, for easier reading. Yes, the lightening is subtle, but subtly is actually what theming UI's is all about. Here's the result -

Just click the thumbs for the fullsize image -

Finally, a few code snippets. Oddly, when I was looking at T/Bird in XP (I didn't check Win7) I noticed that there is no statusbar and that seems to be by design having looked at the code. Strange, because it shows in Linux. Anyway, here's the fix -

Tabs on bottom in T/Bird? - T/Bird has odd coding in that area, just use the extension 'Rise of the Tools'. Works and the result looks good. Well, I think so and you can see for yourselves - I forgot to turn it off for the screenshot above.

Frank

Metal Lion latest SeaMonkey & Thunderbird Themes - Sea Monkey and Silver Sea Monkey"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)